A First for Tango in Buenos Aires

Every night in Buenos Aires is tango night. Throughout the city milongas - the word for any place that tango is danced - proliferate. There are tourist-trap milongas, traditional milongas, modern milongas. There is even a seniors’ milonga, where couples trickle round the room with a grace that is a million miles from Strictly Come Dancing pyrotechnics.

But there is only one gay milonga in Buenos Aires. Every Wednesday, from around midnight, around 100 people climb the narrow stairs behind a door on Maipu in the city centre. The floor is alive with the mink-smooth moves and sinuous turns of the tango, and each face is full of intensity. At tables around the edges of the room dancers drink, chat and watch..

There are dancers in their teens and dancers in their 60s at La Marshall, but the crowd is largely young and cool - and immensely serious about the tango.

The night was founded two-and-a-half years ago by Augusto Balinzano, one half, with his partner Miguel Moyano, of the world’s only professional gay tango duo. Most milongas stick to one style of dancing or music, but La Marshall, like its regulars, is eclectic. "Young people and the not so young come," says Balinzano. "We have professional dancers, doctors, architects, working people who want to relax for a while. We started to experiment with different types of music. Now we have a little bit of everything, traditional and modern, and it all gets together in one night. We were one of the first milongas to experiment with electronic tango music."

When the tango was born in the brothels and streets of late 19th-century Buenos Aires it was not uncommon for men - the macho young cuchilleros and compadritos of the city - to dance the tango together. According to Balinzano: "There are different theories about the history of men dancing together, some good, some not so easy to believe. But here we dance together because we enjoy it - not to revive or revisit the origins of tango."